plastering plasterboard

[Tim Smith]

Hi there

Just putting up a new plasterboard ceiling using 9.5mm plasterboard.

It has a brown side and an ivory side (the ivory colour also going round the sides). The printing on the brown side indicates that plastering should be done on the ivory side.

Just before I started doing this, I happened to see a "Tommy Walsh" programme where he said the opposite. White was for painting and grey (in his case) was for plastering.

Can someone confirm which is correct before I put the whole ceiling up wrong !

Thanks

Tim

[Dave Jones]

Ivory side down. I believe older type boards had a tapered edge on the 'back side' in order to obtain a thicker skim over the cloth scrim they used to use. (I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong!) and hence the need to reverse the board.

[Tim Smith]

Dave

Sorry yes - forgot to mention that it is Taper Edged board. The tapered edge is on the ivory.

I understood that the point of the tapered edge was that if a board was only being painted or wallpapered, the joint could still be scrimed, skimmed and still be level.

Is the tapered edge old-hat now ?

Tim

[Dave]

In article , Tim Smith writes

The brown side is if you are going to skim the whole thing the ivory side is for decorating directly onto the boards, the ivory side will have taper edges so you can skim the joints, don't forget to seal the boards before decorating

[Tim Smith]

Thanks Dave

But why does the brown side have a printed message saying plaster on the other side.

Tim

[Stuart]

You still get tapered edge boards and level edge boards . Stuart

Shift THELEVER to reply.

[Rod Hewitt]

"Tim Smith" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I would have thought that was obvious! I too always heard that you should plaster onto the brown side - but that is plain wrong.

[Dave]

In article , Tim Smith writes

Are you sure its not grey then? British gypsum board is grey and ivory and everything is done on the ivory side whether you are decorating or skimming

[John Rumm]

I expect it is one of those things that have changed over the years. Conventional advice alwawys used to say decorate one face and plaster the other, but all the recent baords I have seen are explicityly marked with instructions to only use the light face for decorating and plastering.

(With the Knauf boards I used recently, you could see a ripple in the brown face that was not present on the light face)

[Tim Lamb]

In article , [e-mail] writes

Where do you put artex then?

regards

[Andrew Gabriel]

This is correct now.

That was the case with plasterboard produced up to something like 10 years ago, which is why you will still hear the conflicting advice.

It actually doesn't much matter. I had a plasterer comment to me a few years that next time I put up plasterboard for him to plaster, could I put it the other way up. I expressed surprise that he wanted to try plastering on the foil backing ;-)

[Rob Nicholson]

Stuff I got from B&Q didn't have this but wasn't a problem as it really needed skimming completely before painting.

Rob.

[Rob Nicholson]

In the bin. Future decorators will thank you :-)

Rob.

[Tim Smith]

Thanks for all the replies.

One last question though, I started putting up the ceiling and then wondered if there was a "correct" postition for the screws.

Having put the short edge of the board parallel to hte joists, I put three screws across the width of the board (at 150mm, 450mm and 750mm) into each joist.

Does this sound reasonable ?

Tim

[Mark]

Its actually called grey and ivory, British Gypsum recommend plastering only to the ivory side which is also called the finished face. The reason being that only the finish face is made with new and treated wood pulp the grey face is made from recycled paper, also if you look very carefully at the grey face you can see the roller marks made during manufacture which would show if you were using modern dry- lining methods. [1]

Just to confuse matters you can also get Thistle baseboard that is grey both sides, and was manly used for ceilings which had a stronger paper backing and can be plastered either side.

As far as I know no manufacture now make boards, which are exclusively plaster/ paint sided.

[1] this only applies to BG products, I have little experience with LaFarge or Knauf plasterboard,

But he's a bob the builder on a TV makeover show ;-(

-- Mark§

[Tim Smith]

Thanks Mark,

Any suggestions for screw intervals ? I used 150mm, 450mm and 750mm across the width of a 900mm board. Is this ok ?

Tim

[John Rumm]

What size boards?

With 8'x4' boards, I did every 400mm (in both directions) on my celing and it seemed to work fine.

[Mark]

That's a bit of a "how long is a bit of string" question, but 250mm centres or about 5-6 per joist length (180x120cm sheet) is what I would normally use. Explore

were you (should) find guides to both plaster and board, types, use and fixing. HTH

-- Mark§

[Tim Smith]

This is where I show complete ignorance...

I always heard phrases like "250mm centres" but never really understood what it means ? Can anyone shed any light ?

Tim

[Tony Bryer]

It's the distance between each the centre of each nail (screw, bolt etc) and the next.